# Clue-cows info, take two

Jay Carlson (nop@ccs.neu.edu)
Tue, 6 Feb 1996 15:52:55 PST

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    (Changes from last version: I rewrote all my scripts and there's a
    digest version available.  Oh, and my email address for these purposes
    is now nop@nop.com.)

    The clue-cows manifesto
    =======================

    A number of my friends have unsubscribed from moo-cows due to either
    high volume, or low signal-to-noise ratio.  I started clue-cows
    because I realized I was forwarding messages for them.

    What clue-cows is
    -----------------

    Clue-cows is a forwarding service I provide for selected moo-cows
    articles.  I forward the messages I consider interesting to its list
    of subscribers.

    Clue-cows is effectively a low-tech filtering mechanism.  See below.

    What clue-cows is not
    ---------------------

    Clue-cows is not a mailing list.  That is, you can't send mail to it.
    The only things sent on it are messages that have already appeared on
    moo-cows.

    This implies that you don't need to be subscribed to both.

    Clue-cows is not a Power Elite plot.

    What I forward
    --------------

    I'm not very objective.  I have a strong bias towards people who are
    very well known in the MOO community.  I like answers more than
    questions.  I like technical issues more than social issues on one
    particular MUD.  I tend not to look at messages that aren't formatted
    and spelled nicely.

    Your recourse
    -------------

    If you're a subscriber and you think I'm not doing a good job, you
    have (I think) three choices.

    1) You could whine at me.  Not likely to be effective.

    2) You could unsubscribe from clue-cows and resubscribe to moo-cows;
    after all, you won't miss anything.

    3) You could start your own forwarding service.  Yes, this means that
    you'd have to subscribe to moo-cows again, but you'd be doing *your*
    friends a favor.

    Option 3) is why I claim this isn't a Power Elite plot.  My influence
    is exactly equal to how much people respect my opinion of what's
    important.

    How messages arrive
    -------------------

    If this week we're all on MOO-Cows-Digest, I burst the digests for you
    (I must do so to filter them anyway).  This has the added benefit of
    hiding what the upstream source is doing.

    If you're subscribed to the standard edition, you may not notice the
    switchover from MOO-Cows.  Forwarded messages will still appear to be
    To: or Cc: moo-cows@parc.xerox.com; the only indication that a message
    is from me is "Resent-From: clue-cows" headers.  If you're filtering
    moo-cows with slocal or zinc, you probably don't need to change a
    thing.

    If you're subscribed to the digest edition, you get an RFC934-format
    digest of messages I wanted to forward.  Right now I'm not doing the
    right thing with MIME encapsulation because my upstream source,
    MOO-Cows-Digest, throws away all MIME headers anyway.

    Technical issues
    ----------------

    Clue-cows is currently implemented by a bunch of custom scripts
    written in Python and perl.  They're pretty fragile but if you really
    want them I can make them public.  Just be aware that you too can send
    out a billion lines of Apparently-To: headers if you aren't careful...

    This is a primitive filtering system.  Of course, what I'd really like
    is a Seals Of Approval (SOAP) implementation that works for mailing
    lists.  PICS perhaps will solve many of these problems, but I'm not
    holding my breath.  If you have any pointers to better software please
    send them to me.

    How to subscribe
    ----------------

    Send mail to `nop@nop.com' indicating which of clue-cows or
    clue-cows-digest you'd like to subscribe to.

    --
    Jay Carlson
    nop@nop.com    nop@ccs.neu.edu    nop@kagoona.mitre.org

    Flat text is just *never* what you want.   ---stephen p spackman